Thursday, July 14, 2011

Dissecting the Liberal Talking Points: The Rich Pay MORE than their "Fair Share"

This week we've been taking time to dissect the Liberal talking points as it pertains to the Debt Limit debate. One of the lines that President Obama continues to use that the rich don't "pay their fair share" in taxes. Unfortunately, pesky old facts keep getting in the way of Obama's demagoguery:

(1)

They tell you that the rich "don't pay their 'fair share' in taxes" but unfortunately, it's just not true. Let's look at it by the numbers: The top 1% of Americans earn 19% of the income in America, but pay 37% of the taxes. The top 5% earn 33% of the income, while paying 57% of taxes. The top 25% earn 66% of the income while paying 85% of the taxes. Liberals are right, the "rich" aren't paying "their fair share" they're paying far more than their fair share!

Some sources will offer you a different metric: The percentage of taxes as opposed to percentage of wealth. I'm sorry, but there are two issues with that mentality: One, taxes are paid on income (that's incoming money, for those of you from Palm Beach County, FL) not on wealth. The money that people already have in the bank has ALREADY BEEN TAXED! Whether it was taxed upon inheritance (also known as the Death Tax) or it was taxed upon an increase in investment (also known as Capital Gains Tax) or if it was saved income from a previous year (Income Tax), that money has already been taxed once. So basically, by claiming it's okay to tax on wealth, government is punishing people for daring to save their money or invest well and thus have excess money at years end. Two, and I cannot stress this enough, it's still not the government's money. One way or another, they've already taxed those individuals once, and now, because government is irresponsible with it's spending, they don't feel their previous taxes levied are enough and are demanding more!

Actually, the people who don't "pay their fair share" are a large group of Democrat voters: The bottom 32% of wage earners who pay zero taxes. (2) 43.4 million wage earners pay zero taxes on the federal level. Some even receive tax refunds that exceed the money they paid. That's right...when their deductions exceed their taxes paid, they are paid the amount of the excess in addition to their tax deductions. Translation: If you paid $500 in federal taxes and have deductions that equal $600 and have an income that puts you at the 0% income tax level, you receive your $500 that was withheld back, PLUS an additional $100 that was never yours to begin with!

So 32% of Americans are paying no taxes, and by the way those are the ones who are receiving the government services that the rest of our taxes pay for like Medicaid and other welfare programs. (These people statistically vote Democrat, by the way.) Some of them are even receiving money that wasn't theirs to begin with in a tax refund from the government. Where does that money come from? It's from taxing other people to whom that money DOES belong. Meanwhile, we're running deficits annually. Anyone else seeing a pattern here?

Bottom line, the wealthy pay significantly more than their "fair share" in taxes. The only way to claim they don't is to believe that their "fair share" is whatever government wants it to be. It's simply false a false statement bent on class warfare.